Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848-1933) was the creative genius son of a famous New York jeweller. His flamboyant sumptuous lifestyle and family connections with the artistic world in Europe and America, coupled with his talent and dedication, took him to a leading position in the Art Nouveau movement. Starting his career as a talented painter in the late 1860's, he travelled extensively overseas and at the age of 31 (in 1879) moved into interior design; from the mid-1880's onwards he moved more and more into specialising in glass.
Tiffany was greatly influenced by the glass he saw on his travels to Europe. Two major influences were the art nouveau glass being produced in France by Galle and in Austria by Loetz and others; and the ancient Roman and Egyptian glass which was being excavated from North Africa and the Middle East at that time.
Tiffany was also influenced by the Arts and Crafts movement in Britain, with their beliefs in a return to hand crafting and their aim to make art more widely available. Like others affected by in this movement, he sought to combine his own artistic design talent with the hand-crafting skills of a production team of artisans supported by automated machinery. The outcome, as with his great contemporaries in Europe (notably Lalique and Galle) was a split output; on the one hand the master's own genius-creations and on the other hand a large amount of "industrial" items made to his designs. In Tiffany's case these included most of his lamps and many small glass vessels.
Today, of course, any piece of genuine Tiffany output is treasured and commands a relatively high price, and the museum-quality pieces reach astronomical figures at auction. Prices have been increasing steadily since the 1960's. Even at the time it was made, Tiffany glass was expensive and remained the prerogative of the very rich. Indeed, Tiffany himself took actions which kept the value of his glass pieces high. He donated examples of his work to all the major museums, and if one of his vases stayed too long on retailers' shelves, he recalled it
Information to the left was obtained from the Glass Encylopedia.